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What are MOOCs?

I have started on a mindmap using bubbl.us. Perhaps we can develop this out further.

By Rajesh Pankaj. Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs have been a hotly debated and oft discussed topic in the higher education circles. According to the Oxford Dictionary, MOOCs is defined as “A course of study made available over the Internet without charge to a very large number of people.” This essentially means that a student sitting in the remotest corner of the globe but with access to a computer and a fairly high speed internet connection can have access to courses being run at the most prestigious universities of the world like Stanford, Harvard, MIT and others of their league. Further, these courses are absolutely free of charge and are specifically designed courses which can cater to a niche of students and has no bars on factors like age, etc. While it is true that a vast number of Universities have started offering at least one online course, speculation is rife about it being successful in the long run. More...

By Valérie Emin-Martinez, Cecilie Hansen, María Jesús Rodríguez Triana, Barbara Wasson, Yishay Mor, Mihai Dascalu, Rebecca Ferguson, Jean-Philippe Pernin. This paper proposes “teacher-led design inquiry of learning” as a new model of educational practice and professional development. This model combines four existing models. It integrates teacher inquiry into student learning, learning design, and Learning analytics, and aims to capture the essence of the synergy of these three fields.
Furthermore, we identify how Learning Analytics and the integrated model inform each other and could help integrating Learning Analytics into teachers’ practice.

In_Depth_36_1.pdf

In this paper from the field we will present an example of a Social Learning Analytics Tool to visualize real-time discussion activities in a MOOC environment. Practitioners and researchers can read how to implement and use such a SLA tool as a plugin in practice.
Due to the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), both researchers and practitioners are exploring the potential of networked learning activities.

From-field_36_4.pdf

By Beth Perry, Margaret Edwards, Katherine Janzen. Encouraging reflection in learners studying online is challenging. Yet reflection is often a priority learning outcome. Creative teaching strategies can help create learning environments conducive to reflection. One teaching strategy developed to encourage reflection in online courses is called conceptual quilting (Perry & Edwards, 2010).
Conceptual quilting is an arts-based strategy that invites students to create virtual quilts by piecing together words, ideas, metaphors and concepts from a course or unit that they found most transformational. Completed quilts are shared electronically by posting them in an online “quilt gallery” for all students in the class to browse.

From-field_36_2.pdf

By Mathieu d'Aquin, Stefan Dietze, Hendrik Drachler, Davide Taibi, Eelco Herder. Learning Analytics has a lot to do with data, and the way to make sense of raw data in terms of the learner’s experience, behaviour and knowledge. In this article, we argue about the need for a closer relationship between the field of Learning Analytics and the one of Linked Data, which in our view constitutes an ideal data management layer for Learning Analytics.
Based on our experience with organising the “Using Linked Data in Learning Analytics” tutorial at the Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference, we discuss the existing trends in the use of linked data and semantic web technologies, in general in education and in learning analytics specifically.

In_depth_36_2.pdf

By Juliana Raffaghelli. The new conceptions of teachers’ professional development (TPD) are based on personalized professional learning activities to be implemented in different moments of professional life cycle, in response to contextualized learning needs. As a result, it is expected that TPD yields creative processes that end up in transforming pedagogical practices through reflection and self-awareness on the new professional skills.
However, creating and controlling TPD environments for teachers’ creativity is still a matter of discussion, since such environments are to be connected to the professional life-cycle, and this requires very fluid learning experiences. In this paper, the use of Open Educational Resources as dimension of teachers’ professional development environments, within and beyond the school is explored, attempting to understand if the participation to OER-cycle (as the cycle of using, remixing, creating and sharing OERs) can effectively contribute to creative practices linked to professional learning.

From-field_36_3.pdf

Learning Analytics is about collecting traces that learners leave behind and using those traces to improve learning. It is similar to Analytics and Big Analytics draws techniques from a number of communities with long traditions (including data mining, information visualization, language processing, etc.). Yet, as a field of its own, it is still fairly recent: LAK, the leading conference in the field, is only in its fourth year.
Besides learning analytics, the six articles selected for the issue also embrace assessment in online learning.
The first of the two in-depth articles proposes a “teacher-led design inquiry of learning”. The second one sheds light on the potential cross-benefits that combining Learning Analytics and open linked data research could bring about. The four articles from the field introduce assessment in basic maths, concept mapping for reflection, analysis of the teachers’ learning process, and real-time visualization of discussion activities in a MOOC.
Opportunities for building massive data sets on learner behavior exist as a result of the widespread use of online learning materials, technology platforms and services. A narrow focus of learning analytics concerns itself with improved student retention, but the larger agenda is more related to the personalization of learning, self-regulated learning and the improvement of the overall learning experience. Moreover, a more data driven (or at least verified-by-data-analysis) approach in the learning sciences can help to take advantage of the approaches already well-established in the harder sciences. However, especially in this post-NSA world, privacy and ethical issues need to be taken into account as driving factors rather than as concerns that are only addressed post factum.
Data mining and information visualization can also provide valuable information on the benefits (or lack thereof) of learning technology applications, in order to support decisions in educational policy making. No doubt, Learning Analytics will be one of the hottest topics in learning technology research and development in the near future.

The latest issue of the eLearning Papers has just been published, focusing on Learning Analytics and Assessement. It features two in-depth research articles and four practical reports from the field.